Project Case Study:

Overview

A national, private freight carrier relied on disparate automations and manual business processes to keep their freight bill invoices accurate and up to date. As different individuals were responsible for the oversight and maintenance of the individual business processes, there was a lack of continuity and transparency across freight bill alterations. Some business processes were repetitive or even contradictory.

Main Digital partnered with the client to streamline these independent processes, using the Main () Method^SM to implement Pega RPA on the Pega Infinity Platform, into a single automation capable of handling the full diversity of freight bill alterations, along with increased reliability, accuracy, efficiency, and visibility.

Opportunity 

The diversity of the organization’s business processes presented an inefficiency that Main Digital could solve with a single automation capable of performing all desired tasks and changes.

Main Digital Solution  

The Approach 

Main Digital’s expert project team investigated and documented the organization’s existing processes. Then, the team met with each stakeholder to identify input sources and the business requirements for a streamlined Pega RPA solution. The freight bill alteration process, performed on a mainframe terminal, was also examined. Together, the project team and stakeholders identified each type of change and the information and steps required to perform them.

Leveraging Main () Method^SM, Main Digital provided a solution to standardize all inputs and developed a single automaton capable of ingesting these inputs and performing each desired update task.

The Process 

Main Digital evaluated all input types and designed a single database template capable of containing information for all varieties of updates. Next, Main Digital collaborated with the client’s subject matter experts to translate each input type into a single input data source, which the automation could refresh on demand and read into a common work queue.

With the common queue established, the next task was to develop automation capable of ingesting this queue and performing all necessary update types. Following best practices for code reuse and employing object-oriented programming concepts, Main Digital provided a flexible, reliable codebase with minimal points of divergence for the varying update types. Using an agile approach, Main Digital iteratively built the solution and shared it with the stakeholders, accounting for all business scenarios and use cases.

As the product reached production readiness, the collaborative relationship with the client continued with frequent meetings to review results and validate the automation’s successes. The shared queue design also allowed Main Digital to record and monitor the automation’s successes and exceptions. The client then leveraged that information to identify the most common causes of business exceptions and produce targeted updates to resolve them, which increased the overall success rate of the automation.

The Outcome 

Upon completion, the automation runs daily, making up to 1,000 updates per execution. The previous processes were retired, which ended the problematic repetition and reversals of the past. The new flexible, modular design allows for scale by adding various update types and sources with little or no development.

In addition to the scheduled daily runs, ad hoc executions take place as needed to process thousands of updates. All stakeholders have visibility into communications released by the automation and the work performed through the Pega Robot Manager portal.

The common queue model framework rests at the center of this work. It finds business processes that collect varied inputs to perform a similar group of tasks. Main Digital continues to partner with the client to identify use cases that are ideal for this type of automation leveraging the Pega Platform.